Down Among the Dead Men

XVII

Koski said: “Frisko?” Mulcahey produced a red tobacco tin, opened it, shook out half a dozen cigarettes made of light brown paper.

The Lieutenant took one, put it to this nose. “This stuff’ll make you see around corners, Frankie. Also, — ” he ran deft fingers along the back of the Filipino’s coat at the shoulder blades, “sometimes it gives you ideas.” The steward wore no collar scabbard.

“The little roach was getting ready to take a scram, Steve. When he saw me.”

“Whither away?” Koski asked.

“I have a right to go where I please.” Frankie’s black eyes smoldered hate. “I came here to get another job. You can’t stop me.”

Koski put the tin in his pocket. “Maybe we can find something to keep you busy.” He gripped the Filipino’s arm. “Sarge, how’s for changing partners, hah?”

Mulcahey looked at Joslin. “Is he ready to go into his dance?”

“Yair. Waltz Comrade Joslin into the hall, for a checkup. Tells me he was addressing a union crowd here, Sunday afternoon. Then rhumba along with him to the Seamen’s Institute. Find out if he was playing sweet music to the throng, Sunday night, he says.”

“And if so be it, coach?”

“Kiss the boy good-by.” He pulled at the steward’s arm. “You and I will mosey over to the hoosegow, son.”

“You haven’t any reason to arrest me.” Frankie dragged back. “Just because I want to change my job. Leggo!”

Mulcahey cuffed him lightly alongside the ear. “Get along, little dogie.”

“Leave him alone.” Joslin’s face darkened; he caught the Sergeant’s shoulder. “Arrest him if you want to. But don’t muscle a union man around while I’m standing by!”

“Hark to the hard guy, will you.” Mulcahey clubbed a huge fist, swung a half-hearted punch. The organizer mistook the Irishman’s intent, countered with a savage jab that landed flush on Mulcahey’s mouth, rocking him back on his heels, toppling him over a hydrant.

Joslin whirled, darted across the street between a fruit truck and a moving van. Koski dived toward him, but at that moment the Filipino wriggled out of his coat, sprinted away in the opposite direction. The Lieutenant went after Frankie, caught him halfway up the block. “By rights I ought to put the twisters on you, slippery. Try one more break, I’ll fix you so you’ll wake up smelling ether. Climb into your coat.”

Mulcahey was out in the middle of the street, with his gun drawn, “See where the bugger went, Steve?”

“With the wind, Irish. Best thing’s to shoot in an alarm for him. He can’t keep out of sight of eighteen thousand cops for long.”

“I was not looking for any such demonstration on his part.” The Sergeant felt of his front teeth. “Next time I will take good care to beat him to the punch.”

“Beat him to setting up an alibi, — all I ask. After you stick in the alarm, check here at the hall and at the Essie-eyes.”

“He’ll not put anything over on me again. Depend on that.”

“Okay. Tell the Telegraph Bureau his address is Nineteen Swamp.”

“I got it.”

“If you still feel like chewing, pick me up at the Tavern, after you run the boat down to the Basin.” Koski propelled the Filipino toward Fourteenth Street, signaled a cab.

When they were rolling toward Centre Street, Koski growled: “What makes, Frankie? Nice lady give you the bounce?”

“I quit. I have a right to quit.”

“Sure. But all same kind of sudden.” The Filipino made no reply.

“Should think you’d like it better on the yacht now. With Ansel gone. You didn’t buddy up with Ansel? Did you?”

“I didn’t like him. But I didn’t kill him.” Frankie struggled, indignantly.

“Quiet down. Does Captain Cardiff know you’re running out on him?”

The steward looked bored. “He sent me ashore to get supplies. I sent the supplies back. I don’t intend to go back. I’ll have no difficulty in finding a place.”

“We’ll find a place for you, all right. Where’d you push the pots and pans before you went to work on the Seavett?”

“On the Polaris.” Frankie straightened his narrow, black tie, resentfully. “Mister Fross’s ketch. For the past five years.”

“Oh, yair. Friend of Hurlihan’s, isn’t he?”

“He is Mrs. Ovett’s lawyer.”

“Fross recommend you for the job?”

“He lays the Polaris up for the winter, I was free to accept other employment.”

The detective mulled it over. “Did Ansel work for Fross, too? Before he went with Mrs. Ovett?”

“Yes.”

Koski said nothing more until the cab pulled up back of headquarters. “Out and in, Frankie.”

“You can’t arrest me without letting me telephone to my lawyer. The law says so.” The Filipino nursed a patch of surgeon’s tape on the back of his hand.

“You’re not being arrested. Just detained. For investigation.”

The steward balled his fists. “I want to call my lawyer.”

“Who is he? This Fross?”

“He would take my part. Yes.”

“All right. I was going to call the gent, anyway. Don’t work yourself into a lather. We’ll give you a nice, quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Until you hear from him.”

He marched the Filipino to the booking desk, gave him into custody, signed the complaint blank. On the line: NATURE OF CHARGE, he told the desk-sergeant to write: possession of narcotics.

“Print him, Charley. Ask Identification to check the whorls with the negatives from that house of ill-fame in Brooklyn. With anything they might have been able to dust out of the Purdo’s kid’s room on Treanor Place. And anything else they’ve got lying around on this suitcase job.”

“You wouldn’t like ’em to use the comparison microscope down at the Federal Bureau, would you, Lieutenant?” The desk-officer made notations on a pad.

“They’ll do that in due course, Charley, I’ll be over at the Tavern, if the Inspector wants me.”

He used the phone book, found Henry Sutlee Fross listed at 40 Wall Street. But he didn’t find him in. The man on the switchboard said Mister Fross was in court, wouldn’t be back until mid-afternoon.

It was beginning to pour when Koski crossed the thirty feet from the white stone building to the Headquarters Tavern on Centre Market Place, — a cold, steady downfall that brought shiny black coats and dripping hats to the racks beside the café door.

Koski found a table near the window across the street from the Hole, where the patrol wagons drove up to empty their hauls. He ordered bean soup, pot roast, home-fried, red cabbage, raisin pie and coffee, — continued to gaze at the purple handwriting on the menu long after the waiter had taken his departure.

He stripped a loose end of cotton from the folded napkin beside his water tumbler. A loose end, he reflected grimly; too many of them, entirely. The Seavett was full of them. Why hadn’t anyone seen Merrill Ovett on the trip across the river from Rodd’s to the Wall Street dock? Why hadn’t Barbara Ovett been more concerned about her husband’s unexpected return, his sudden vanishing? What had been bothering Cardiff when he watched Koski go into Mrs. Ovett’s stateroom? Was there any significance in Frankie’s quick-leave?

There were other bits of unfinished business that rankled in the Lieutenant’s mind. At the Bar-Nothing Ranch, for instance. How had the man with the bandaged face known his victim and the Purdo girl would be there? What knowledge was Big Dommy holding out? What had Claire Purdo known that made it necessary for her to be rubbed out?

There weren’t so many doubtful angles to the Whitehall Street phase of the case, but they might be the most important of all. The son who rebelled at his father’s pattern of life, his shipping out under an assumed name, the high number of sinkings of Ovett vessels, the short-wave apparatus—

He got to his feet, wandered down between the tables. Uniformed men nodded to — him, plainclothesmen swung genial punches as he passed so he had to curve his body out of range in order to protect his ribs. A couple of cameramen inquired if he had any more meat in the refrigerator.

A graying inspector with a napkin tucked up under his chin called out: “I’ve had a councilman Cahill on my neck all morning. Says he’s going to go all the way up to the top if you don’t lay off Dominick.”

“Some day that Greek’ll short-circuit himself good.”

“I told Cahill we had no control over you; you were unpredictable, erratic and we’d be glad when you put in for a pension. But we had to stand for your vagaries because you knew the secret vice of one of the mayor’s cousins.” He gnawed on a lamb-bone. “Cahill will probably start sucking around you, now; get you to use your inside to boost him into a soft spot at City Hall. These two-bit wirepullers!” He mopped his mouth, grinning. “Was Dominick in that thing?”

“All the returns aren’t in yet, Eddie. I’d say Dommy wouldn’t be elected. Thanks.”

He stopped at the cigar counter long enough to read the list of Departmental Transfers pasted on a cardboard; edged into one of the phone booths. It took five cents and five minutes to learn that the Sixth Detective Division was blank on the subject of visitors to Ellen Wyatt’s sail-loft and that the SINBAD message had been telephoned in to the Fulton Street Western Union from a coin-phone.

He got back to the table as Mulcahey came in, shaking himself. “A wild guess chase, entirely, skipper. Joslin was in the midst of admiring friends all day the Sabbath. Unless half the waterfront is committing mass perjury. Still, I will feel better when we have him in tow, again. What are you munching on?”

“Pot roast. Stop spraying the tablecloth. You’re worse than a Saint Bernard after a bath.”

The Sergeant examined the list of dishes. “Eels today. Juicy fried eels, praise be. And a beaker of bock, garsong.” He felt of his lip, wincing. “Say, coach...”

“Say away...”

“Did you happen to gander at the Joslin scar? Would it be farfetched to figure a guy who wanted to commit a felony would wish to hide a marker like that? With a bandage, mayhap?”

“Some such idea did occur to me.”

“It would carry weight with a jury, in my opinion.”

“Why for? You could cover up a hell of a lot of things with a bandage like that. A mustache, for instance. A beard. Or the shape of a face.”

The waiter brought a tray. “Phone for you, Lieutenant.”

“Thanks, Mac.” He laid down his fork, went into the booth. “Koski, here.”

“Nixon. Hate to spoil your repast, but I knew you’d want to know.”

“Bomb away.”

“Eustape Mirando, junkie, license 2714, recovered a portion of a human body from the east bank of the Gowanus Canal about three-quarters of an hour ago.”

“Every little bit, added to what we’ve got.”

“What we’ve got is an arm.”

“Which arm?”

“Left.”

“Just the very thing I wanted, Inspector. How did you know! Tattoo mark on the bicep?”

“Not even a vaccination mark. The upper part of the member was what the Medexam office calls severely lacerated. In other words, all chewed up to hell and gone. Done with a knife, I’d say.”

“Runs to form.” Koski considered. “How about the hand. Any prints?”

“We can get prints from a billiard ball. The skin’s shriveled, of course. But we’ll pump a little embalming fluid in the arteries and bring the lines out a little. If there’s enough left of the arteries.”

“Um! About the prints. When you get them, check around with the others, hah?”

Nixon made a derisive noise. “We’ve got a checking job that would panic a blonde at a night-club cloakroom. I’ve got three of my best boys glued to the eyepieces, classifying Agaroppoulous, Purdo, Johnson,—”

“Who’s he?”

“She. Dora Johnson. Colored maid at Agarappoulous’ den of iniquity, — Johnson, Hurlihan, the shots from Room Five at the Bar-Nothing, from the Purdo place, the Wyatt studio, Merrill Ovett’s apartment and God knows what.”

“Add one minor item. A Filipino by the name of Frankie Salderon. Frankie’s in a pew at the Tombs. Much oblige.”

He went back to the table. “How’re the eels, Sarge?”

“A dish for the duke, no less.” He lifted his glass.

“Attaboy.” Koski drained his coffee, standing. “They found an arm. In the Gowanus. Seems to go with the rest of the jig-saw. Whoever tossed it into the canal made sure we wouldn’t see any tattooing on it, though. It was a busy day with the knife.”

“What did the dirty ripper do? Row around the harbor to scatter the pieces far and wide?”

“Tide might carry a leg out of the Gowanus to Governors, caught it just right. Arm was probably dumped in with it. One drifted; the other stuck in the mud. We might have to dredge a bit. For the rest of him.”

The Sergeant wiped foam off his lips. “I knew I should not of put them grappling irons away in mothballs. Shall we be up and doing?”

“Another little errand for you, first.”

“Would it be a trip to the yacht to see Lady Itchy-britches, perchance?” The Sergeant tapped the rim of his glass. “A couple of these under my belt and I feel like a new woman.”

“Doesn’t concern the female of the species. Hop over to Pier Nine. Ask that super, Hurlihan, if he’s seen or heard from Merrill Ovett. What he was doing Sunday morning, around noon. Bigwig Berger, at the Line offices, claims Joslin was with Hurlihan at the Sulgrave Hotel. But Joslin says he was with Merrill Ovett. Maybe all three of them got together. Like to know about that.”

A City News legman strolled past, chewing on a toothpick. “They’ll be fitting you birds out with depth charges, now, won’t they, Lieutenant?”

“Yair? Why?”

“Didn’t you hear? Flash just came through. One of those new super-subs was sighted only a few miles off Fire Island Light, just after dark last night. By those survivors the Algonquin brought in.”

“Ah! Somebody probably saw some wreckage moving in a tide-rip, — thought they’d spotted the grampa of all periscopes. Don’t get the public gidgety over a report like that.” He dismissed it with an offhand gesture and the newshawk moved on.

But there was nothing offhand about the urgency with which Koski put his call through to Coast Guard Intelligence...